I have a folder on my phone called “Cringe Archives.” In it are screenshots of my most disastrous texts. My personal favorite: “So, what’s your favorite kind of dinosaur?” Her: “lol what?” Me: “It’s a conversation starter. Mine’s velociraptor. Very underrated.” Her: “ok this is weird. bye” (For the record, velociraptors are underrated. I stand by it.)
And sometimes, late at night, I think about that seventeen-year-old kid holding a floor-Cinnabon, heart pounding, desperate for a story. I want to go back and tell him: You’re already in one. It’s just not the one you think. It’s better. It’s messier. It’s yours.
I finally told Alex how I felt, three years too late. She was already dating someone else. She said, “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
Three months in, I realized something shocking: I hadn’t written a single internal monologue about our future. No fantasy wedding. No dramatic fights. No imaginary breakup to test my feelings. I was just… present.
That’s the secret that nobody tells you. Real love doesn’t feel like a movie. Movies are stress and tension and swelling music. Real love feels like quiet . Like taking your shoes off at the end of a long day. Like relief.
That’s the trap of awkward adolescence. We mistake narrative hunger for real feeling. You know the one. The person you never officially dated, but who occupied more mental real estate than anyone you actually kissed. For me, it was a friend from summer camp named Alex. We wrote letters. Letters. With stamps and everything. We’d stay up late on the phone until the cord got twisted around my bedroom door.
The deepest cut wasn’t being rejected. It was being forgettable .
Keep tripping. Keep reaching for the Cinnabon.